Since the new terms, “Semantic Web” and “Web services”, have been introduced, researchers have followed two different roads. Following one road, academia has focused on developing a new set of languages to enable the automation of Web services execution and integration based on the Semantic Web. On the other road, industry has taken the lead to propose and develop technologies and infrastructures to support Web services and Web processes without, until recently, paying much attention to semantics. It is fundamental to analyze the trend that is being followed with regard to the “Semantic Web” and “Web services”. Therefore, two important questions need to be answered: “do the approaches taken by academia and industry differ in how they add semantics to Web services?” and “are their efforts converging or diverging?” This paper, based on a panel discussion at an international conference on Web services, which consisted of members of both academia and industry, addresses precisely these two questions.